A funeral was held Thursday for a flight attendant from AirAsia Flight 8501 – the first victim of the crash to be returned to her family ­– while bad weather continued to hamper recovery efforts. In total nine bodies have been recovered from the Java Sea.

Search teams are hoping to locate the doomed Airbus A320’s fuselage and find the “black box” recorders, which could provide clues about what caused the jet to crash.

The plane went down with 162 people aboard and never issued a distress call.

“It’s possible the bodies are in the fuselage,” search-and-rescue coordinator Sunarbowo Sand said from his base in Pangkalan Bun on Borneo island, the BBC reported. “It’s a race now against time and weather.”

Debris from the plane was found Tuesday after the flight from Surabaya in Java to Singapore disappeared on Sunday.

Recovered bodies are being flown to Surabaya, where relatives who are providing DNA samples are waiting for them to be identified. One more body was recovered Thursday and taken to Pangkalan Bun.

The first body to be identified is that of flight attendant Hayati Lutfia Hamid, whose identity was confirmed through fingerprints and other means, said Col. Budiyono of East Java’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit.

Her body was returned to her family at a brief ceremony at a police hospital in Surabaya, where a relative cried as she put her hands on the casket, which, according to Muslim customs, was lowered quickly into a grave.

Relatives lower the coffin containing the body of Hayati Lutfiah Hamid into the ground at a cemetery in Surabaya.AP

Meanwhile, some investigators believe the airliner may have stalled as the pilot climbed too steeply while trying to avoid a storm, according to Reuters.

The plane was flying at 32,000 feet when the pilot requested permission to climb to 38,000 feet, officials told Reuters.

Controllers initially denied the request because other aircraft were in the area. A few minutes later, they allowed the plane to climb to 34,000 feet but got no reply from the crew.

“So far, the numbers taken by the radar are unbelievably high. This rate of climb is very high, too high. It appears to be beyond the performance envelope of the aircraft,” the source said, stressing that more information was needed to reach a definitive conclusion.

In the search for the wreckage, Singapore’s navy deployed an unmanned submersible that can survey the seabed. Indonesia sent a minesweeper, a private survey ship and a vessel that can conduct 3-D imaging and detect pings from the black boxes. Aircraft capable of detecting metal also are being used.

Two Indonesian Navy officers guide a rescue helicopter in the Java Sea.Getty ImagesIndonesian Air Force personnel search for AirAsia victims.EPA

Officials are “focusing on finding the body of the plane,” Indonesia air force spokesman Rear Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said. “There was something like a dark shadow once seen from a plane, but it cannot yet be proven as wreckage.”

The longer the search takes, the more the bodies will decompose and the more parts from the aircraft will spread.

Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas said there’s a good chance the plane fell mostly intact, with many passengers remaining inside it.

“Most passengers still should have had their seat belts on, particularly as the plane was going into weather. The captain would have still had the seat belt sign on,” he said.

The wait for news has been hard on relatives including Sugiarti, 35, whose 40-year-old sister, Susiyah, was a nanny traveling to Singapore on vacation with her employers and their 2-year-old daughter.

“I hope that they can find her body soon. I feel sorry for my sister because it has already been five days,” she said at a crisis center in Surabaya. “I am trying very hard to be patient.”